Dear Madam /Sir,

Thank you to find enclosed in English the magazine “Boues mag” number four (N°4) of Program of Structuring of Fecal Sludge Market for the Benefit of poor households in Dakar (PSMBV).
Good reception


Cover page:




TABLE OF CONTENTS

P. 03 Editorial

P. 04 Program for the Structuring of the Fecal Sludge Market for poor people in Dakar suburban areas (Pikine and Guédiawaye)

P. 04 The call center: an innovative tool for the development of the fecal sludge market in Senegal

P. 08 Process for the Certification of Emptying Companies

P. 12 Communication: a key tool for ownership of the program by the stakeholders

P. 16 The delegation of the management of Dakar fecal sludge treatment plants to the private sector: a successful public-private partnership model

P. 21 The emptier guarantee fund : easier access to funding

P. 25 Payment of domestic septic tank emptying service through mobile money: improving people’s financial access to mechanical emptying services



Best regards,
Aissatou Basse

Thanks, ONAS, for keeping us so well informed about the progress of this project!

I would like to point out that there is also this presentation available that was given by Mbaye Mbéguéré at FSM3 in Hanoi in January 2015:

Market Structuring of Fecal Sludge Management for the Benefit of Poor Households in Dakar:
www.susana.org/images/documents/07-cap-d...1-1-3-1-Mbeguere.pdf

(the rest of the presentations from this conference are accessible here: www.susana.org/en/resources/conference-m...s-2/97-2015/259-fsm3 )

His last slide:

Key Results

1. First contract signed for the operation of 3 FS processing plants in Dakar
2. A customer management platform (call center) that will offer affordable service fees to poor HH in Pikine / Guediawaye
3. Project leadership invited at ONAS weekly board of Director meetings
4. Improved relationship between ONAS (national authority) and none-pipe sanitation service providers
5. Increased visibility of FS emptiers job profile (TV interviews, participation to leading international events, trained personnel)
6. Database of 59 000 HH Septic Tank have been referenced.
7. Database of 135 trucks referenced
8. Network of partner for testing innovative technologies and business model
9. A reference case for many other utilities

This might be a good example of involvement of the local government (i.e. utilities in this case) which we discussed here:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/142-up...n-for-the-urban-poor

Elisabeth

For those following this project, let me also highlight the video of Mbaye's presentation from the conference in Hanoi in January 2015 here:



Or go to time 1m:08s here:



The Q&A session starts here with a question by Andy Narracott (WSUP) about how ONAS (as a single entity in charge of sanitation) was created 20 years ago:

Hi All,

I'd like to chime in here and very belatedly answer some of the questions brought up about the Omni-Ingestor. I'll start by giving a quick overview of the OI and a bit of a status update.

The OI is intended allow emptiers to access pits/tanks (vaults) that currently can't be reached by vacuum trucks, and pump material that is consolidated (thick, up to 40% solids, shear strength values of 2+ kPa, un-pumpable by most vacuum trucks, typically removed manually) and thicken the sludge to reduce the volume that needs to be transported. The objective is to increase market reach, reduce transportation costs, and increase profits. That's it in a nutshell. This, of course, is no easy task. Over the course of the project, the organizations working on the project of developed a number of unique and interesting technologies, some of which are actually useful and will find their way to commercialization. In fact, most of the subsystems needed to make a fully-functional OI work in principle or practice. The one challenge we have yet to overcome is the development of a dependable, viable, and sustainable sludge thickening system.

Aware that progress on the sludge thickening system could delay the project, the foundation wisely split the project into two parts: 1) pumping, and 2) mobile pre-processing. While development of the Mobile Pre-Processor (MPP) is lagging, the OI pump development has been moving along. All three mechanical pumping systems being developed have gone into domestic field testing and two have completed that testing. The last pump is expected to complete it's testing in September. After that, one or more pumps will be go through a revision cycle based on lessons learned from the testing and more units built that will be sent overseas for foreign field testing.

On to answering some questions:

Chris Buckley asked how the team will empty very thick sludge. As Mbaye pointed out, the vaults in Dakar have a low solids content. But, solids do accumulate in pits. For the Dakar market, I would suggest that fluidizer is all that is needed to enable thorough emptying. One of the companies working on the OI project, Synapse Product Development, incorporated a simple means of fluidizing vault contents into their pump design. The SPD pump is taken to the vicinity of the vault. It draws material into a tank and then pushes the material out to whatever vehicle/tank is being used to transport the sludge. When it is necessary to break up consolidated material, a valve on the discharge is used to redirect the liquid back into the pit through a separate hose with a simple nozzle on it. The septic tank company here in Washington that used the pump for about 3 months loved it. This could be easily adapted to the vacuum trucks in Dakar. Alternatively, an Omni-Ingestor pump capable of pumping thick sludge could be used (once the pumps are ready for commercialization).

A comment related to Chris' question about GIS-tracking. The OI pump is intended to have a GPS receiver on the Pit-Side Unit, so not only will you know where the truck is, but have a very good idea of where the pit is.

Nelson asked about the size of the OI. If we are only talking about the OI pumping system and related equipment (power, hose reel, etc, and not the MPP) everything will take up the bed of a mid-size pickup truck. The PSU itself is about the size a 55-gallon drum...maybe a bit taller. I'll post some images in a separate post.

Elizabeth commented on the maintenance issues associated with the OI and pointed out that vacuum tankers are not well maintained. This is definitely a concern. While a number of issues related to maintenance can be addressed in the design phase, ultimately, owners need to do maintenance, have access to the parts, be able to afford the parts, and have the know-how to perform the maintenance. Most of this is beyond the scope of the project but it isn't being ignored. For example, the control system developed for the OI pump and MPP has the ability to communicate the health of the machine to the owner. Future efforts may take advantage of this. I hope that at some point, the OI owner can log onto a website and not only see the state of his system, but that maintenance issues can be predictively identified, appropriate actions suggested, and repair parts be ordered and shipped in advance of the issue disabling the system. The website would also include maintenance manuals, schematics, how-to-videos, and a blog for owners to share stories.

Elisabeth also posted an image of an OI pump/MPP system trailer. The image presents a volumetric study of an OI concept intended to show how small the MPP could be. A similar system was built and tested but that design is not currently being developed.

I hope this clarifies a few things.

Cheers,

Andrew